B

Badminton



Tennis for the clumsy and interminably lazy,
this perennial backyard favorite proves one
can participate in sports without having to
lay down his beverage and/or cigarette.

Besides, when is it not a treat to hear
a friend's perpetually constipated wife
utter the word shuttlecock in mixed company?





Lester Bangs

Notorious for his prodigious intake of various intoxicants,

this borderline-pyschotic music critic remains

among the very best of a rapidly dying breed.





Jill Banner

Talented young actress perhaps best known
as Virginia, the lethal ingenue in director
Jack Hill's classic comic chill-fest Spider Baby.

Go ahead. Bite me.





Brigitte Bardot

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand, um, whatever.






George Barris



Visionary designer and builder behind
the original Batmobile and Herman's Munster Koach,
Barris remains hugely influential among hotrod enthusiasts
and unreformed model-building uber-geeks of all colors and creeds.



We'd love to see what this fellow could do to one of those Pontiac Azteks.





Dave Barry



A Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist
for the Miami Herald, Barry has
time and again proven capable
of approaching most any mundane
political topic, piece of celebrity gossip
or hard news item with uncommon wit
and remarkable insight.

Not near as obnoxious as P.J. O'Rourke, either.





Bass Ale



Say what you will about their proclivity
for kidney pie and blood pudding and
apparent disdain for basic dental hygiene,
the blokes across the pond sure do brew up
one mean malted beverage.

Tasty, full-bodied and intoxicating,
among fine draughts Bass truly tops the scale.





Charles Pierre Baudelaire

Somewhat-creepy French poet whose obsessive infatuation
with mind-expanding substances (and repercussions of same)
resulted in some of the most compelling ideas and works
to emerge from the oft-impenetrable Symbolist Movement.

Somewhat responsible for the numbskull ponderings of The Doors,
but ultimately forgiven, we suppose, if only because Baudelaire
tended to leave out many of the cheesiest organ bits.





Beagles

To heck with your hyper Jack Russells,
yapping bichon frises and fugly terriers:
When looking for a loyal family pet,
we prefer the traditional, old-fashioned
affections of the plain old beagle,
whose dependable knack for sniffing out
garden vermin and preoccupation with
table scraps and his own testicles
wins out over topiary haircuts and
fancy pedigrees every time.

Let's see your pug pilot a doghouse.





Samuel Beckett



Nobel-winning absurdist Irish playwright
whose Waiting for Godot mixed
existential angst, farcical degradation
and grotesque metaphor into a thrilling
and sick amalgam of surrealist monkeyshines.

Twisted godfather of burroughing pythons yet hatched.





Being There



Simple fable of a dim-witted DC gardener (Peter Sellers)
whose sudden eviction and chance injury finds him rubbing
shoulders with - and ultimately influencing - Washington's elite.

Nearly flawless mix of great visuals, acting and
metaphorical storytelling still packs quite a punch.





Chuck Berry

Freakishly talented, hugely influential and mildly insane,
Berry is not only a brilliant guitarist and gifted songwriter,
but one hell of an entertainer.

The one true King of Rock & Roll.





Barbara Billingsley



Sweet, even-tempered and prone to pearls,
Billingsley's June Cleaver continues to
represent our ideal TV mom.

Let's hope hubby Hugh Beaumont was as nice to the Beaver.





Brad Bird

Oscar-winning director of modern animated classics

The Iron Giant and The Incredibles.

Blue Velvet



Eraserhead director David Lynch's
technically brilliant, imaginatively disturbing
and violently poetic look at the seedy, dark and
twisted underbelly of suburban American placidity.

Seldom have sex, drugs and rock & roll
seemed so nauseously compelling.





Humphrey Bogart



Short stature, grizzled mug, a pronounced lisp
and perpetual ashtray breath, Bogey nevertheless
epitomized early, World War II-era cool.

Throw in a hand-rolled smoke, trenchcoat and
Lauren Bacall (or Ingrid Bergman, for that matter)
and you've got a regular joe made good
who refused to be played for a sap.





Boodles Gin



Dry, crisp and clean with just the right hint of botannicals,
Boodles remains the preiminant gin for mixing martinis, binge
imbibing and/or treating those pesky spider bites.





Hieronymous Bosch



Late 15th-century Dutch artist specializing in highly stylized, symbolic paintings
combining religious visions with creatively monstrous punishment.

Tremendously influential, Bosch's modern descendents include
Dali, Spencer Gifts, Zappa albums and Heavy Metal magazine.





Pieter Bruegel (The Elder)



Sixteenth-century Flemish artist whose scenes of peasant life regularly
devolved into nightmare visions influenced by the aforementioned Bosch.

Blotter for the easily nauseated.





Lord Buckley



Patron saint of hipster babble
and Christian brotherhood,
Buckley was a monologuist whose
greatest riffs recounted the lives
of historical figures including
Mohandus Gandhi (The Hip Gan)
and Jesus Christ (The Nazz).

A bowdlerized version of Buckley's
God's Own Drunk even found
its way onto an early Jimmy Buffett
album, proving that the Lord sometimes
works in mysterious ways indeed.





Jimmy Buffett

This Alabama native turned spokesman for laid-back
Floridian hedonism once blended country, folk and
caribbean elements into a salty and often sardonic stew,
skewering snowbirds, rednecks and fringe-dwellers alike.

Unfortunately, Buffett succumbed to long-standing
merchandisig forces in the early eighties, turning
a once talented songwriter into the guitar-strumming,
daiquiri-swilling equivalent of Goofy in a tacky shirt.





William S. Burroughs



Addled, prickly and frequently obscene,
this Beat icon chronicled existence
on the outer rim of civilized society,
his distinctive prose populated by
hallucinatory beasts, milk-spouting dildos
and other depraved, junk-hungry lowlifes.

A visionary of collective anesthesia.